Re: BIOLOGY: Complexification

James Rogers (jamesr@best.com)
Tue, 14 Jan 1997 23:17:56 -0800

At 09:02 PM 1/14/97 -0800, Tony Csoka wrote:
>David Musick writes:
>
>>There is no selective advantage for the chemicals to form increasingly
>>complex patterns. There are just so many chemicals all bouncing around
>>and reacting with each other somewhat randomly on a huge planet, and in
>>places,certain chemical systems *happen* to form which, because of the
>>particular way they are arranged, happen to have the property of causing
>>the surrounding environment to form very similar chemical systems, which
>>also have the property of causing very similar systems to be
>>formed..[TRUNCATED]
>
>Well, you've just about convinced me with your strong argument. Stil, we
>have quite a way to go to create biological self-replicating systems in
>the laboratory, but maybe it will happen some day.
>

There *are* other classes of organic self-replicating compounds that have
recently (last 10 years) been discovered but they don't appear in biology
and I don't know that much about them.

Actually, I think there is a possibility that these polymers may be better
suited for computing than DNA. I doubt anyone has considered this before,
since so few people are aware that other classes exist, not to mention that
few computer gurus are chemistry gurus also.

Now that I have got myself interested, I will have to look into it.

-James Rogers
jamesr@best.com